The present invention relates to an image capture apparatus for capturing a scene and related method thereof, and more particularly, to an image capture apparatus and image capture method for generating a plurality of captured images of a scene through adjusting a relative position relationship between an image sensor and a lens in a direction substantially perpendicular to an optical axis direction of the lens when capturing the scene.
The production of two-dimensional images that can be displayed to provide a three-dimensional vision has been a long standing goal in the visual arts field. FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating how the human depth perception creates a three-dimensional vision. A stereoscopic vision requires two eyes to view a scene with overlapping visual fields. For example, as shown in FIG. 1, each eye views an image point from a slightly different angle, and focuses the image point onto a retina. Next, the two-dimensional retinal images are combined in the human brain to form a three-dimensional vision. The disparity D of the image point refers to the difference in image location of an image point seen by the left eye and the right eye, resulting from a particular eye separation, and it is interpreted by the human brain as depth information associated with the image point. That is, when the image point is near, the disparity D on the screen plane is large; however, when the image point is far, the disparity D on the screen plane is small. More specifically, the disparity D is in inverse proportion to the depth interpreted by the human brain, i.e.,
  Disparity  ∝            1      Depth        .  
To derive two-dimensional images that can be displayed for providing a three-dimensional vision, a conventional stereo image capture apparatus is devised to have a plurality of lenses included therein. For example, a conventional double-lens stereo camera has a left lens and a right lens, where the left lens is used in the production of a left captured image of a scene and the right lens is used in the production of a left captured image of the same scene. In addition to the left lens and the right lens, the conventional double-lens stereo camera requires a synchronous system to achieve the synchronous production of the right captured image and the left captured image. It is difficult to reduce the size and cost of the conventional double-lens stereo camera since lens contributes a large proportion in both size and cost of a camera. Besides, as the double-lens stereo camera has two lenses, it is incompatible with the general two-dimensional image capture system with a single lens.
Therefore, there is a need to devise a single-lens image capture apparatus capable of generating images which capture stereo contents of a scene.